Tethered Balloon Measurements
Tethered balloon launch preparation in Ny-Ålesund
The special dynamics of the Arctic boundary layer in the vicinity of glaciers and mountaineous orography are investigated by tethered balloon measurements on campaign basis at the AWIPEV base in Ny-Ålesund, Spitsbergen. The results are used e.g. to validate the boundary layer representation in the atmospheric model HIRHAM under different atmospheric stability conditions and their effect on the exchange of heat, humidity and momentum.
Maximum meteorological information is obtained both in the spatial and temporal dimension by operating the tethered balloon system in two different modes. The classical configuration provides vertical profiles with high spatial resolution by ascent and descent of a single meteorological sonde. Moreover, contemporaneous measurements of up to 6 meteorological sondes installed along the tether provide profiles of humidity, temperature, pressure, and wind from ground to about 2 km. Monitoring the meteorological parameters for a time span of several hours allows to detect the dynamical evolution of the Arctic boundary layer with a high temporal resolution.
Temperature evolution in different altitudes
Schematic of contemporaneous measurement configuration